Currency for Living

        I'm going to be talking mostly from the perspective of being a resident of the United States, most of my explanations will apply with a few name changes to almost every nation. Money makes the world go round, not true obviously, but also tough to argue with as it certainly seems to spin the human world.  Going without currency is to an extent impossible if you live in a modern nation. we are paid, sometimes even forced to get special accounts just to receive the fruits of our labor. Why given the facts of how much impact money, and finance has on our everyday experience it's a wonder hardly anyone seems to understand it, or even have any desire to.  The boons of an abstract store of value, a thing that represents all other things in potential can not be understated, and would have to make it to any list of ideas that changed the world. Having a representational system of value has without a doubt opened up trade, allowed for specialization at unprecedented levels.  That does not mean our current system will continue as is, nor does it mean our current system is infallible.  There has been much made about how contrived our markets are, with not price discovery, but manipulation at work as the rule.  As a world we live in a debt based system, consolidation of resources, and money as a thing.  Money as thing is fine, if the money is a thing, ours is figures on a screen or pieces of paper, with the majority of it only coming into being when it is created with interest attached by private parties.  This makes for different classes of money, easy to understand if all money is debt, the money created with a lower interest rate attached would have more value than that created with a higher rate.  This interest on the creation of money sets in place a organized crime like skim, where the percentage of interest charged is stolen right off the top.  All while zero risk, as your product is needed by everyone, yet does not exist till you sell it to them.  Many will now be saying that I am ignoring the reserve requirements.  These might have been a restraint at one time, with zero interest and the presses on full blast, meeting the requirements is an after the fact event.
        How might we change this?  Issuing currency is and must remain with the sovereign, be it a nation, or municipality what have you.  In order for the money to not take over, it must be maintained as a service to the nation by the nation.  The US must issue it's own currency the credit agencies, and private banks would have to adhere to a full reserve requirement.  This would eliminate the infinite growth mythology, and allow for expansion and contraction of the currency supply based on the needs to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.  Isn't that what representational money is about?  Making it as simple as possible for an individual to exchange what they have, for what they need?
      In fairness the US monetary system never stood a chance, with even our history being rewritten to leave our money as a prime motivating factor for the revolution.  Some even goes so far as to make a case that Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury was an agent for international banking interests. As interesting as history can be, the who did what who, or he said she said game will not do a thing to change the present.  Like all technology, money is a thing most do not wish to spend time thinking about. We just want it to work, ours doesn't, was not planned to, and we are in the world change over of global trade settlement.  If there was intent to work our system as intended the bail out would have been in public works projects. Where those with the least are put to work by the government to make improvements everyone will benefit from. This allows the currency to enter at the bottom, and trickle it's way up through the full economic structure.  What we have done is cut out the middle and bottom, injecting the currency almost at the top. Combined with interest rates kept artificially low, that currency has no choice but to enter into speculative markets just to find a return. This only adds distortion to the overall economic data.
     We can make money the tool it is intended to be, or we can be little more than economic servants to those who understand it's tricks. The choice is always ours.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard  

Python Twitter Bot with Tweepy

In an earlier post I laid out a bit how I was working on a twitter bot to automate the promotion of this blog.  I'm a slacker, that has a bad rap for many folks, for me it's the highest calling I can aspire. Get the most accomplished, with the least effort, and disturbance. In the words of Bruce Lee, "Be Like Water, My Friend".  In the dao of piglet, and the te of poo, it's the mystery of being the uncarved block. In the teachings of the Kabbalah or Quabbalah, which was made into such nice easy pictograms in traditional tarot, it's learning to be representative of any, while maintaining your own sense of self.  I have one Boss, and I'm really hoping that Boss never shows up, but I always am sure to recognize There is always a bigger fish. When I crashed the party of social media a few years back, it was never intended to a social outlet. I had already experienced that in years of mmorpg's, irc, bbs, going back to wargames dialers, and phone phreaking. What I was always best at was social hacking, a rather disturbing art when taken to the level of social engineering, or mass media marketing.  After all the drugs, meditation, and study I did over the course of  a lifetime, I finally started to see a pattern, it's not even an unknown pattern, matter of fact it's all over the place, or at least portions of it are.  When I finally awoke to what I had been attempting to understand, about people, and their place in creation, I found that I had missed the relative short window of opportunity to be counted among those who's say carried any weight. In social media I saw an opportunity to leverage the flood of information as a means to get ideas running through my mind. into the hands of those who could make use of them.  I accidently crashed the party of the twitter follow gangs, that handle the bulk of the twitter advertising. It's a fairly ingenious method of leveraging the split platforms of twitter, and sms, in concert to trade influence in the twitter verse. I just saw it as an expedient means of sharing ideas to everyone as quickly as possible, regardless of how they were accepted. I even refused ever offer of easy income, not out a disdain for the finer things the world has to offer, but from an understanding of the myth of an infinite growth paradigm in a zero sum game. I'm speaking of the effects of compounding interest on privatized currency creation. The same effect is seen again and again in almost every market. It's the money itself I have issue with, not currency as an idea. The accounting for who has what, and why, is important. In our current system so many are being left behind, not out of ability, but just by becoming a party to the madness which has a seeming strangle hold on our global civilization. The worship of money, and idol, a representation of something only in potential.  As I said I'm an old school hacker, I once streamlined a system for reporting the percentage of the utilities used in manufacturing in New York state were taxable.  Was a great job while it lasted, at 18 having a work from home job for 10 or 12 an hour is amazing. Taking the time each reports takes to generate from 6 hours to 2 hours, and being told your services are no longer required, not so amazing. Being allowed to help a crop of Police Officers pass a class they had no reason taking, Amazing!. Having your professor tell you there is no place in the world for programming games, again not so amazing. I stopped using computers, and started playing games with them, and then started fixing them.  In the course of my several years of tech service for a local community, what I found was they didn't actually want for me to really solve the issues, they wanted me to manage the problems that cropped up with using outdated, or mixed era systems. Sometimes they almost wanted me to take over the day to day operations of their endeavors. All well and good if it is a mentor situation, when it's a lack of desire to stay current enough to manage your own affairs, well if your not the adult, there aren't many roles left.  After exhausting some of the more entertainment oriented uses for the raspberry pi b+ I turned to what else could this little marvel do. I started seeing vpn's, and pirate drop boxes, wifi extenders to create public clouds all over. All cool concepts, but not much use to me personally, given my current circumstance. Realizing I needed to have a bit of programing brush up, I think the last time I wrote code before this was 88 or so. I hit up code academy, and picked python as it is a seemingly popular high lvl language with many popular api's. I also did some html work, I get it, and it's powerful, it's just puts me to sleep doing it. Even in python as entertaining as it was to create the bot as far as I've taken it, and I am well aware how limited it is in it's current state.  It's basic, but it will tweet for you, pick from search terms to promo others, so your account generates more attention from the community, and will auto follow new folks, and unfollow those that are just attempting to boost numbers. Once I got there essentially I had a automatic twitter promotional bot. Did you know people get paid for doing promotional work on twitter? Even though it makes sense from the marketing game standpoint, that is a slippery area, we are talking about folks that have no moral issue with using psych jobs on children to profit.
So today I'm going post the code for my bot friend. working title was twitternanny, but for easy of use I have taken to naming them after the account they manage. I currently have 2 instances running on my raspberry pi. They may come down at the end of the month, as I have already given notice, my leap of faith I guess, with no place on horizon as of yet. I guess I could always battery power it, and stick in an open wifi cloud in a tree or something, but what would be the point. I ended up using twitter as an object lesson of the insanity of exclusivity.
Enough of my ramble, I get sick of myself sometimes.
here is the code, use it abuse it.



def hourlytweet():
    filename=open(argfile,'r')
    f=filename.readlines()
    filename.close()
    api.update_status(status=f)
    print("hourly tweet posted")


def follow_unfollow():
    followers = api.followers_ids()
    friends = api.friends_ids()

    for z in followers:
        if z not in friends:
            api.create_friendship(z)

    for z in friends:
        if z not in followers:
            api.destroy_friendship(z)
    print("follow, unfollow done")


def search_retweet():
        search_terms= ['python', 'technology', 'raspberry pi', 'ingress', 'news', 'breaking']
        g = random.choice(search_terms)
        g = '#' + g
        results = api.search(q=g, count=1)
        for u in results:
            if u not in alreadytweeted:
                api.retweet(u.id)
                print("retweeted top result for", g)
                alreadytweeted.append(u)



x=1
y=2

while x<y:
    localtime = time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time()))
    hour = int(localtime[11] + localtime[12])
    print('current hour is:',hour)
    if hour>5 and hour<24:
        try:
            hourlytweet()
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        except:
            print("could not post hourly tweet")
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            print("could not post retweet")
    elif hour == 24 or hour < 6:
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            pass
    time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))

some of the basic framework came form http://www.dototot.com/how-to-write-a-twitter-bot-with-python-and-tweepy/
So big ups and respect, thanks for the head start, and to those I didn't mention, sorry I use many reference sources when I start a little project.

Thanks
Jack
aka
PanseyBard Digital PiedPiper

Is Love The Real Cult of Personality?

Through out this really messed up journey, that I'm told humans call life, I say that not as slight to the word, it's all the baggage.  Even through how cross wired I alway seem to be atm, I think thats the blessing and the curse I guess.  When you step off the matrix grid, and step back on it in bare feet.  We are all so busy everyday running around looking for the next thrill, the next greatest thing. Some bit of fluff, and we only like our medicines sugar coated, and hell I like that stuff too.  I just do not like the feeling I have clean up after folks all the time.  Cuz these arn't my Kids.  What do you do when you find the perfect child care, and you realize it so soon, that everyone wants this person to have children of their own and raise them.  That is a trend through out my Life, everyone wanted me to be the father of their children.  When I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm making most of it up as a long just attempting to keep some measure of personal sanity while everyone around me has their own ideas on what I should or should not be doing.  I have never desired to bring any children into this world because I love children.  The world I was being presented with was both amazing, and terrifying, I was on the whirlwind tour, and I'm not sure when it started.  There is an old story my mother told me, about when I was only 2 or so she says, I don't remember much anyway.
Anywhoo, It was something about walking in on my grandpa jack garvin alot the memories surrounding times I spent with him are kinda hazy, that kinda protective scary.  As if you personally always feel ok around a person, though you know they are dangerous to others.  Mom tells me that she walked in on me taking apart a tv set, with my gjg, and when they walked in it was so shocking that it was like spell being broken.  There is something occurs when falling in love with another person, and I'm talking sexual desire, though it's often confused as such.  Love is just where you see yourself reflected in another. That complete desire to be connected, sets up a link, bidirectional communication of a sort.  This is all well and good, and everyone likes to play and swap energy, cuz of course how could there ever be anything other than just energy right?  People seem to think I'm some kinda super genius or some crap, wtf is that, IQ has nothing to do with numbers. And this is a free magic lesson, you can take it or leave it, as everyone has been trying to tell me. The ball is in my court. Only no one seems to be completely open and honest with me, and I'm begining to get the gist.
Love is the ultimate cult of personality, what else can draw some into some 1 else so completely that worlds are born and torn apart so quickly and dramatically that no one even notices, hardly even the people that were there.  The messed up thing about my life is, all I wanted to ever do was play, when really it was never about play at all.  It was the passion, the fire that is the real world, with the scrapes and bruise, they heal and mend given enough time, and according to my sources thats just a trick of relative motions, My life journey thus far, I have an inkling it's just about to get going into a completely other direction again.  Has been not just about learning about life and death, those are not all that important, as much as they are crushing and liberating when turn to personal abundance, and loss.  It's all the good gooy center sweet sticky stuff we are missing, SHWAG is just an acronym for shit we all get right?  I was always about substance, it was about how expensive the restaurant, or home I lived in was.  Personally a little sanctuary where I can find a bit of solitude, when I grate upon my friends.  There has been a running theme in my life, I was always playing monkey in the middle for everyone group I got shoved into, is some vain glorious attempt to make everything ok. Take away the muck and mire of the real world they inhabited. How can that possibly be my responsibility,
I am the same person that dropped out of high school, not once but twice.  Than dropped out of College. Got a position of working from home at 18, mind you this was maybe 1988 or so. It was to figure out what portion of a companies electric consumption was able to be considered taxable in the state of NY. At the time I didn't think much of it, come on, I was lounging at home punching numbers into spread sheets, from lotus 123, and I believe it was microsoft though it might have been word perfect. It was great I believe it was like 10 or 15 an hour or so, and they gave me an estimated time they expected it to take, 8 to 10 hours or so per report.  It was work, I was plowing through crap like crazy, it's just what I do. As began to get a clearer image of what they were doing, I realized it was all disordered, they had no organizational skills what so ever.  They were duplicating work all over, and expecting me to do the same.  I streamed lined the process to about 3 or 4 hours per report.  This of course sets up the dilemma. They are expecting them to take much longer, and I admit I was tempted to just over bill, and be done.  I didn't choose that path, instead I went and told them exactly what I had set up, which they said they were really happy with, only now they did not me anymore. Thank you good bye.  I wonder how long they used my system that set up for them, to save them precious time in their lives to actually enjoy the retard abundance they were surrounded with already to over flowing, and I get sent off with a thanks bye.  There was a sense of feeling cheated, or not quite cheated, as technically they followed the letters of the law.  But arn't letters all equal to numbers, and if there are only 9 of those, and they all are infinite unto themselves, arn't we just left with a 1, and the void. cuz the 0 is not the void, though often mistaken for it.  The void is more of sweet dissolution, of stillness an expansion or contraction of perception that allows one take a break from all the stress and pushing and pulling of a binary world, and 0 is just a place holder, a cipher, a riddle and key, it's just another symbol on some twist path to madness and for perhaps a select few reemergence into sanity, From the crazy overlay of artificial reality, by the projections of the mind.
We got ingressed from the computer, and tv screens, we flashed it right into our brains, and then we get plucked, spindled and mutilated while some unseen hands happen by and grab a little nugget from remains.  This is such an place, Cuz I was the one that remembered my original love of machines, cuz I was a real boy all the time. and so is binary, cuz 0 is just place holder, it doesn't mean anything. it's just gibberish, and what do you get when you take the voids away 111111111111111 which is always yes. you only need to understand completely ridiculous nature of programing languages, I never was a hacker, though I've heard stories of things I've done, they were plucked from my mind, and wiped away.  It was never about attempting to take anything for me, I always knew it didn't mean anything real. I was in the real world already. I was just playing with the toys I was given in the manor I found entertaining at the time. Hacking has nothing to do with computers, but it makes for a sweet framework.

I'm not sure I was ever any of those kids here, it's like a twisted lost fragment from someone else.

make up your own mind, and be nicer to each other, everyone likes to play, just not the same games.
Domination is for sure not kindness ever, cuz how can there be choice offered unless you trick it in, kinda like the randomness factor in the digital verse. it's not real. thats only a sweet sticky syrup, to gives us an excuse for choices we regret in the rear view mirror.  That to me is sad way to go about this, and I'd rather have a little honest quiet discussion like someone around us has got any sense.

make up your mind, I make up mine, thats choice, not push, or pull, poke prod or what have you.
Life isn't a sprint if it is it's already over with, the thing about a singularity, is once it's popped it's gone and going on forever. But none of us like that idea, some somewhere somewhen, some whatever it is, figured it out for us, it's called creation and equalization of pressure differentials. Once understood those can be harnessed in a crazy amount of ways.  Ever take a look or stop a min to think what a wifi card is?  how it works? and how the energy is all around us already it's in the wifi hot spots, step in a cloud and it just pours in, if you connect to the appropriate contact points that would normally plug it into an internal wifi laptop. I'd imagine similar functions could be worked around blue tooth devices.

Be kind, and gentle, and if that still isn't working walk away. there is always more void

Jack

Beware the Bail In

                 Back to the Spawning Grounds

Going to attempt to keep this brief, much of this I have covered before, though not from this particular angle.  Quickly to give a basic overview of why bail in's are certain to lie ahead, and will be coming to a bank near you.  Our monetary, or currency system can be likened to a pyramid structure.  Though an easier representation is monopoly, unrestrained capitalism is like a monopoly game.  Someone eventually wins, they take control, and ownership of so much, that the game freezes, no money is able to move around.  As anyone who has played monopoly knows, when this happens the game is over, someone won, and everyone else lost.  The pieces go back in the box, and everyone including the winner has to find something else to do.  In america this was well known, and up till recent time regulations were in place to make sure no one could win the game.  You could get ahead of the other players, but a cap was put on how far ahead an individual or group was allowed to get. This was not done to punish the rich, it's to ensure the system continues to function as a whole.  It ensured that if a person reached the top they either stop playing, and just maintain, or fall back into the herd, or they work to close the gap between the bottom and the top. Even if it is purely selfish motivation of coveting personal wealth.

                       The Injection Deception

Make no mistake, taxes are wealth redistribution.  Yes we pay taxes ostensibly to pay for public services, and public works projects.  You've likely heard the phrase "time is money", if we use that as a lens to understand taxes, why the highest tax brackets were hit with the highest percentage of tax burden for so long.   Most people have a job, they trade time directly for money, this is the idea of wages.  When you are in a job earning wages, the taxes you pay, can be seen as giving a portion of your time to the state every year.  So in simple terms if you pay 10% of your wages for a year, you spent 10% of your time laboring for government.  Almost like the idea of 36 days, and work for the government for nothing.  So far so good, we all like having nice public services. Like good schools, parks, water, roads, all the obvious things we all use and share.  The issues with this begin to show when a person stops trading time for money, and instead trades someone elses time for money.  This is the idea of income,  it does not have to be exploitive, though when the difference is between wages, and income are forgotten it certainly will be. When you pay rent, or a mortgage any kind of loan, and you are paying it with wages, you can consider the time spent to earn that money as spent working for that person.  As is more then likely apparent to most, you can not physically be in more than one place at the same time, your limited to working one job at a time.  This is not the case for income, in income you can be working all over, all the time, no matter what you are physically doing.

       What does this have to do with you, bail in's, and how close they might be?

Stay with me just a bit longer and it will be clear. If capitalism is like a giant monopoly game, and all monopoly games end the same way, than the governments job in managing a capitalist economy is to make sure no one actually wins.  That is the only way the economy can keep going, if to much money is allowed to be owned by any one player the economy stops.  That is where the taxes come into play, before the reforms in the 80's there was a 75% tax bracket.  This meant that if someone started making so much money that it would hurt the economy, the government would step in and take most of it, and redistribute it  back in the game.  This type of taxation, where the highest earners pay the highest %, is part of the balance to keep the game from ending.  In this set up, the government uses the taxes to provide basic services for everyone, and when it is needed. The government stimulates the economy, by taking money from the rich, and giving it to the poor.  Not in handouts, and welfare, but in public works projects.  It puts them to work, with the rich peoples money, to make new things for everyone to use.  Once the % of earnings paid in taxes inverted with the top earners paying a smaller % than the middle, and low earners. You start cutting off the flow of money to the poorest, and most vulnerable first, though all are eventually affected.  The government ends up taking from the bottom, and middle, and directly handing it to the top.  We saw this in the 2008 event, what followed is exactly what honest economic models predict.  The interest rates, and what normally thought of as safe haven or hedge assets are kept artificially low.  Money printing starts, and stays going non stop, money pours into speculative markets, instead of working it's way through the economy.  This is what measured in currency velocity, it measures how fast money moves through the economy. Along with this comes the high numbers of unemployed, or underemployed.  Though this has been hidden in changing how unemployment is calculated, all you need to do is watch labor participation rates, as more and more are forced out of the system entirely.  As this continues, those that understand how the system works begin to see they are going to lose everything when the system crashes.  They can pull out, or give away most of their money, or lose all of it.  Many of the top earners are doing just that, pulling out, or suggesting the billionaires give away half their money.  George Soros are among the pull out crowd, with Buffet, and Gates in the give away camp.  Both of these are selfishly motivated, do not kid yourself into thinking a multi billionaire giving away large sums of money is kindness.  When Buffet says it's a problem he pays a lower tax % than his secretary it's because he is being altruistic. He understands that if that continues eventually he won't have a secretary at all.  These are the QE money injections, they only kick the can down the road a little bit, till you create so much debt that everyone starts to panic, before that is allowed to happen, they will take currency out of the system.  This is the bail in, it's purpose is to keep a lid on the panic of hyper inflation, I can't say when, only that it will happen, the law to allow it was in the last budget.  

Did Christianity Foster the Jewish Banker Stereotype?

               It's all in The Numbers

The Jewish Banker stereotype myth, and the perceived link between money lenders and changers and Judaism is as pervasive as it is seemingly unquestioned.  Of course being religiously linked, you do not have look beyond religious traditions, and dogma to notice where and why.  For right or wrong, and with great misunderstanding of traditions, the very foundations of Christianity paint the Jewish faith as having been corrupted by the money lenders.  Jesus as acknowledged by many works was a rebel, a reformer, or a conservative.  He was devout in his faith, and from his perspective felt the Temple had strayed from the true teachings, and his mission was to restore it.  This is poignantly shown in the money lenders in the Temple story.  In order to paint the picture we need to understand this is not a secular community.  Faith does not just guide what most modern western culture would label as "spiritual" aspects of life.  This is a state based on a Faith, which of course means, the faith governs all aspects, from the most mundane to the most exalted.  That is where the Shemitah needs to be understood.  This essentially governs economic, and production, but it also covers debt remittance between the people.  This idea of economic reset, would have been quite important to member of the house David.  Recorded are many ways in antiquity and modern times of man using clever wording to work around the Shemitah. An example of this would be the creation of a trust to transfer ownership of land to a non-jew for the year, so it can continue to be worked.  Also the use hydroponic greenhouses as they are not in the soil.  The cycles outlined, are in no way random, they show an understanding of compounding interest most lack today.

               Usury The Golden Ticket

 In the pre christian cradle of modern western civilization had it's own ideas on interest. Ranging from an outright condemnation as being against nature by Plato, and Aristotle. To the Greek and Roman laws regulating interest rates on loans.  The early Christian church in the 3rd and 4th centuries already banned interest on loans made by clerics, with some speculation it was already condemned if not banned for laypersons.  By the 11th and 12th centuries charging interest at all was considered a sin.  For those of Jewish faith the church had made different rules, which even by the 1100's allowed for reasonable interest to be charged.  A ban does not eliminate the desire, or need, we have been shown this in modern times with prohibition.  For Jews in the Christian controlled west, The position of money lender, or changer become inadvertently one they could uniquely fill.  This was at a time when Jews in the west were subject to much discrimination, and barred from practicing many professions.  Not until the 1800's does the Holy See acknowledge it as legitimate to charge interest on loans, as well as exact penalties for the failure to live up to the obligations of a loan. As I have discussed often one of the prime motivations for the American Revolution as stated by Franklin was interest on currency creation being charged by the Bank of England.  So for hundreds of years those of Jewish faith were not just allowed, but encouraged to take up a profession regarded as a sin. By the middle 1500's the portrayal of the greedy Jew demanding unreasonable terms is clearly in evidence in works such as The Merchant of Venice.  What had been set up was an exclusive right to the financial services sector of much of early Christian europe. While it being transactions between Jew and Gentile exempted it from the restrictions that apply to transactions between Jew's.

               Distorted into the Modern ERA

Most of this historical basis is before the advent of modern systemically problematic practices such as fiat currency, and fractional reserve banking.  That the modern opposition to world financial structures condem.  Could it be this distortion of history is in part to blame for one of the modern worlds worst crimes against humanity?  If I am honest, these is great discomfort in presenting these links of history, but feel it would be remiss to not at least raise the question.  When WWII is discussed and the how the nazi's came to power the changes in economic policy are largely glossed over or ignored completely. Being rightly overshadowed by horror felt at the depth of the atrocities committed.  Others have done much research into how Hitler came to power, and turned the german economy around through privatization, and banking reform along with clever financing.  This brilliance though belonged not to Hitler, but to Hjalmar Schacht who was forced out of the government before the war began due to opposition to rearmament. Jewish influences were used as a scapegoat for the surrender in WWI.  For a disillusioned profoundly disturbed Hitler returning from the front this was just the outlet needed to serve as a focus.  As we still struggle with ideas of stereotyping in the modern world, it might be worth while to be aware a label sticks long after it's reason for being is forgotten.

As always make up your own mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Is it Money?

This is a United States one dollar bill, it has been, and is many things.  If you have lived on planet Earth over the last couple of hundred years, than this piece of paper has affected your life.
If you have grown up in the United State, you have been told a story of how breaking the grip of monarchy has made you free.  Omitted from this narrative has been the story of the dollar, and how the war for it's control, has created invisible shackles of economic entrapment.  While it is beyond the scope to offer a complete historical account in a blog post.  I will instead hit some high points, and show how our collective misunderstanding of money, currency, and economics has left our continued freedom in doubt.

No More Kings:

    Yes the revolution was fought for the right to self determination. In other words to wrest control of the fledgling colonies from english rule.  This in part involved the physical arm of rule, the King, military of Britain.  Another aspect was the power to create currency, not create money, as I will show later these are not always the same.  The colonies had been using a self created currency to allow for trade amongst themselves, called colonial script, much like the paper money we use today. This had the effect of a healthy growing local economy, it also had the effect of cutting the Bank of England out.  By this time control of the bank of england was not in the hands of the crown, but had already transferred to private hands.  As evidenced by numerous passages from the time, they were well aware that this amounted to a hidden tax on all trade.  A hidden mechanism that ensured the transfer of wealth from the colonies to Bank of England.  As well as ensuring a method of control beyond force of arms, much like a parent might manipulate a child through monetary controls today. Well documented is the victory over the physical control.  When it comes to being governed through control of currency, we lost, so we do not hear about it.  Like any conflict, the history is written by the victors.  Once the physical conflict ended, the economic conflict kicked into high gear.  The First Central Bank of America was chartered in 1791, backed most famously by Alexander Hamilton, and opposed by Thomas Jefferson.

This Means War:

When the charter for the First Bank of America expired in 1811, and fueling the ignition of the War of 1812.  This conflict was fought all over the Globe with many varied participants, it ended in 1815. In 1816 the Second Bank of America was chartered, by James Madison with the promise of controlling inflation that had been created as a result of the the war.  Lasting until it's charter was not renewed by Andrew Jackson, who had denounced it as corrupt.  It's demise in 1836 created what has become known as the "free banking era".  During this time there were only state banks, and without a plan to replace the outgoing central banking authority.  There was nothing in place to ensure economic interests were being protected.  This period culminates in the Civil War, which while it had the effect of ending slavery, a close inspection shows it was not the cause or intent of the conflict. This conflict from a banking perspective culminates with the banking act of 1863. Which set up the national banking system, ending the free banking era.  This framework was exploited repeatedly to push forward the need for a central lender of last resort.  The final push of instability known as the panic of 1907, prompted the push for a lender of last resort.  After the failure of the Aldridge plan, The Federal Reserve Act was adopted in 1913.

The Beat Goes On:

Once The United States entered WWI, which had much of it's underpinnings found in the railway running from Iraq, to Germany, redrawing the economic power structure of europe,  The fledgling Federal Reserve became the issuer of the bonds used to finance US participation.  Post WWI, the Fed, was able to cement it's power to create and destroy the nations currency, under the leadership of Paul Warburg.  It proceeded to institute a series of policies creating booms and busts, leading to the crash of 1929.  At this point the United States is effectively bankrupt, the years following known as the Great Depression find their conclusion in 1933 and the New Deal.  This had the effect of holding all future generations responsible for the debts incurred by their parents, and grandparents. This was also when the US began to exit the gold Standard. FDR in 33, making it a crime for US citizens to own and hold gold bullion.  Once the gold had been confiscated the government price for gold was raised to $35 an ounce.  Enter WWII, which of course also, aside from having the highly emotional, and publicized drive of hate. The atmosphere which fostered these attitudes, had roots in the harsh economic penalties placed on Germany with the treaty of Versaille.  Post WWII, at the Bretton Woods conference, the dollar was established as the world reserve currency, with the Federal Reserve guiding international monetary policy in 1944.  The dollar becoming the world reserve currency had the effect of placing a hidden a tax on all trade settled, payable to the Federal Reserve.  This held relatively steady till 1971 when Nixon removed final ties to gold.  In it's place had been engineered what has been called the petrodollar.  The United States had engineered deals with the opec nations, to only accept dollars in exchange for oil.  Thus maintaining the need for all other nations to continue to use dollars to settle international trade.  This final decoupling of the dollar from gold, just solidified the identity crisis paper currency has had forever.

It Never Was Money:

Paper currency, even when backed by real money, never was, and never can be real money.  It is at best a representation of money, and that only while it is directly backed and exchangeable for real money.  Currency is money when it is made out of money, like silver, and gold coins.  In 1974 when Ford lifted the prohibition against American citizens owning, and holding gold bullion.  The minds of the people had already come to think of the paper as the thing with value.  To make things really simple, money is what people turn the currency they do not need for day to day living expenses in to. Currency on the other hand is the accounting tool. It measures how much an economic system owes you, or how much you owe it.  This basic misunderstanding has been used to ensure, the masses remain in perpetual debt, and considering this debt to be wealth.  Understand, this is not about enslavement on an individual basis, how much or little an individual participates is unimportant.  This about dependency on a macro level.  If you want to partake of the benefits of the system you automatically participate in sustaining.  There is a reason gold is considered money, even when it is obviously not currency, and the same can be said of silver, and many other tangible assets.  They hold value over time, and are exchangeable for currency everywhere.  Being key aspects of money, the dollar obviously does not fit, having lost over 90% of it's value since 1913.

Now and Forward:

What are called fiat monetary systems, with interest on currency creation have a mathematical life span.  This kind of system is in essence what is commonly referred to as a ponzi scheme.  It is also the background push behind the infinite growth idea.  The interest attached to every dollar created is a hidden tax, or wealth transfer. As long as the economy as a whole has a growth rate ahead of this interest no one is the wiser.  In 2008 this system reached a mathematical break point,  Interest rates now have to remain at near %0, along with passing around a series of currency printing. The ironic thing being with the suppressed interest rates this new currency does not enter at the bottom. Instead it directly goes into whatever will provide a return. This continues the decoupling of the top from the bottom started in the 80's, as well as lowering the currency velocity.  In the simple terms, this is the time of the monopoly game where 1 person owes everything is only a matter of dice rolls from attaining all the paper.  Alternately if interest rates are allowed to rise even above 3% the US government can no longer afford to borrow the currency it needs to function. Even at 0 interest, anyone can notice the debt has already gone parabolic, doubling in Obama's presidency this is likely to accelerate.  This broken system, will than be offered up as a failed idea, with fiat currency being shelved as evil.  Only nothing will be changed, the alternative gold backed currency will be just that. Gold backed, a representation of money, with debt still attached to it's creation.  Perhaps if done correctly what has been used to secretly enslave, can be used to ensure a move toward ultimate freedom.  

Solutions:

1: Nationalize the Federal Reserve, ownership to be a trust made up of ever citizen of the United States.  It's books to be publicly available, to ensure it's transparency. The fed would still be responsible the management of the currency. As well as the IRS, you still have to pay for services if you desire to have services. This is not as bad as it sounds in an a working system.

2: No interest on currency creation, this is so big it gets it's own.  Currency being different than money is only created by the Federal Reserve.  Money is not created, it's value being intrinsic.

3: End fractional reserve banking practices. This is actually covered in only the Fed creating currency, being in essence a mechanism for creating currency from nothing.

4:  End Corporate personhood, along with currency being considered speech.

5: End Currency speculation, currency is to facilitate, and encourage productivity, and trade.  Speculation only distorts the purchasing power.

These of course are not complete, or do I believe they are the only fixes.  These are small moves that would be steps on the way.

As always make up your own damn mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

App: Idea Auto Surround Sound Setup

    Just a quick one today.  A friend started talking about wanting a 3d microphone. Which being a bit high at the time sent my thoughts racing down how a thing like that would work.  Quickly returning the though of triangulation of the sound using the know quantities of the speed of sound, and the distance between the microphones.  Those are all you need to calculate where a sound originates, Once here it was easy to imagine listening to your favorite performance as if you were sitting in the middle of it.  Being able to point to a location in the room and say thats where the guitarist is standing.  Of course the recording is only half the equation, and my natural tendency toward playing devils advocate was only to happy to point out. Without a surround sound system correctly set up the effect would be diluted, or dispelled completely.  Crap this would for sure limit the appeal, I mean getting the settings right is the biggest pain in the butt for surround sound systems. That was when it hit me.  Take that same concept, and reverse it.  Make a smart phone app that has access to the microphone, and the settings and playback on the surround sound system.  The app plays a series of tones through the speakers. So the phone tells the surround sound systems to play tones out of the speakers, knowing an approximate direction to expect it from. The app tracks the time between when it triggered the tone to play, and when the mic heard the tone.  With that information the app can get a location, and adjust the settings for that to be the sweet spot.

As an aside, Many economists despite mainstream reporting of economic recovery, continue to warn of pending bubble collapses.  Now for the most part these types of events have little impact on me directly.  That doesn't change my curiosity involving this pseudo science governing our lives.  The main question asked over and over is when.  Not that I believe you can figure out the exact when, but there is a way to figure out a last possible date.  The math for when the system itself can not function, This would give you a collapse by date.  Of course it would have to be run regularly as the date would shift as policies are enacted to stave off the inevitable.  There are some known qualities, and well understood correlations.  Things such as, there is a cap on the maximum interest rate the federal reserve can set, before the US government can no longer afford to borrow the money to keep running. My understanding is this is currently about 3%.  There is also a predicable point where if the currency velocity drops below the system grinds to a halt.  Even the slow down in currency velocity is predictable, as the wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, the velocity of course slows.  These would give a great start point for the math certain end date, almost like the doomsday clock.  The other side is psychological, as people lose faith, the systems breaks down.   This is going to be tied to large indicators, that may or may not be an accurate reflection of economic health,  This does not make them any less predictable.  Such as, with compounding interest, there will come a point when people are unable to pretend anymore.  A mass holy crap, that can never be repaid, related to the rate of the debt increase, which is speeding up.  You can get the psychological by looking where it has already happened.

As always make up your damn mind

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Fiat Currency, and Greece's EU Exit

           There is much ballyhoo made about the US dollar being backed by nothing but faith.  While it is true there is no material resource, gold, silver or the like acting as backing.  This does not mean it has no backing at all, only that it not resource based.  The truth as is so often the case is stranger than the fiction.  Fiat currencies in general are backed by the governments ability to tax it's citizenry in the future.  This is partially true for the US dollar, but the dollar has another backing, oil.  As I said a resource does not directly back it. Meaning you can not go to your local bank and trade your dollars directly for oil.  What we did was much more insidious, and far less noticeable to the everyday person.  The US made deals with the opec nations to only sell oil in dollars, ensuring the dollar would be in high demand.  Fiat currency is not the real issue at hand, as I've stated many times, if your going to use a currency system fiat is the only way to go.  Resource backed currencies always run the risk of the resource being cornered, altering the value of the currency.  Our problems with the global financial system are more foundational.  Currency creation being held not by the collective, but by private organizations, who than attach interest onto the creation of said currency.  This starts the cycle of fiat currency being treated as a commodity.  This speculation on what is essentially an accounting tool, distorts the real world purchasing power of the currency.  These combine quite nicely with fractional reserve banking, an other distorting effect.  Fiat currencies may be many things, legal tender, banknotes, and the like, one thing it is not is money.
          There is no way for Greece or any other nation within the EU to fix their economic woes while remaining in the union.  What we see taking place across the EU is a direct result of the structural issues of a currency union without a political, and/or a fiscal union accompanying it.  The rise of debt amongst the EU nations being shifted to the troika(EU, ECB, IMF) is about centralization of power. Greece was saddled not with economic relief, but loans, and policies that would ensure the loans could never be repaid. All Greece need do is exit the EU, bring back their own currency being printed by the government, not the privately controlled central bank.  This would allow them to internally jump start the flagging production, as well as lower the prices on Greek exports.  For a real recovery, look to Iceland.  For those saying the Greek's entered the debt, and must pay it, is just propaganda silliness.  We live within a debt based system, and most of these debts never have any reality other than on paper.  Add to that ideas of compounding interest, and debt transfer from private to public, and suddenly they look less and less legitimate.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Living in the Current Sea

         

Toes in the Water

         Once again I'm going to talk about money, and currency, things I find fascinating, frustrating, and generally misunderstood.  Money is anything that stores value, and is widely expungeable, meaning it's easy to trade.  This makes almost any object money of a sort. Currency on the other hand is often not money, Fiat currency is never money, yes I'm saying those pieces of paper people seem so enamoured with are not money, though they are currency. So what does this mean on a practical level?   For many nothing, they will not make the distinction, and will have a confusing relationship

with what has become an essential tool in an increasingly complex global civilization.  Others will quickly grasp the concepts and see myriad ways to apply that understanding for individual advantage. Still others, myself among them come to a rather uncomfortable realization, at the core of many "conspiracy" tale.  Private central banks of issuance in a fiat system have come to own the world.  Crazier still, with how the systems have been set up, future generations taxes have been promised to pay for "borrowing" of the present (I used the quotes there due to borrowing requires something to be transferred).  So the productivity of future generations has been promised as collateral for infinite "borrowing" power in the present.  We hear screams of out of control debt in a system where no currency is ever created except through debt.  There is a valid reason for this, we are in many ways a bipolar system.  On the one hand coldly rational, on the other fluidly emotional.  In pure fiat systems, being backed up by nothing other that acts of faith (laws, continuity of government, that the sun will come up...tomorrow), perception is often more important than the hard figures.  When fiat currency systems reach numbers people start to view as unrealistic, it triggers a cascade collapse. This of course is an emotional event, not a mathematical event. In a purely math sense a fiat system can expand infinitely.  So if debt is the basis of the system, yet to much debt crashes the system, what we have is cleaver tight rope act, of keeping enough debt being retired, or payed off, with a constant supply of new debt being created,  Issues begin when you start to add in ideas of fractional reserves, leverage, interest, and speculation. Before I get on with a visualization of these concepts, lets take a quick stab at some of those issues.

The Waves

          Fractional reserves, and leverage have much in common. Each act as force multipliers to steal a term from military strategy.  In fractional reserve it allows for the lending of thing that do not exist. In simple terms, it lets a bank hold 1 dollar, and lend out 10. In a similar fashion leverage allows 1 dollar to pretend to be 10.  These both create distortions in the Current Sea(more on this later), or economy,  With the bank there is never any risk when using a fractional reserve system.  Banks do not lend any money out, when a loan is created new currency is created, supposedly fractionally backed by bank money.  This newly created currency has a life span of the loan, and it's value is in it's tie to house, or car, business it was originated for.  Leverage distorts the current sea is similar ways by creating an artificial increase in total number of units making up the complete current sea.
Though it does so in a different manor. Using leverage you can take 1 dollar, put it up as your risk, while you use 10 dollars to speculate in some market, or venture.  Leverage is generally a short term loan so to speak. often lasting only the day.  This is tied in to the ideas of margin,  Margin calls have, or the act of calling in all loans due, is how our system has repeatedly transferred real wealth to the banking interests.
         Interest, or usury, especially compounding interest might be the single biggest factor in turning currency from a tool to support the development of humanity, into a tool to enslave it.  As already pointed out if a fiat system our currency has nothing physical backing it, and is only brought into being through creation of debt. This sets up the need for what has become known as the infinite growth paradigm.  Essentially, if you borrow 10 dollars today cuz you need to eat, and promise to pay it back in a week with interest here is a simplified version of what takes place.  You go to a bank, and ask to borrow 10 dollars cuz your hungry, you say you will have more currency in one week, and pay it back in full at that time.  The bank says sure, but, you have to pay us 11 dollars.  The bank than types 10 dollars into a computer letting the current sea know you now have access to this newly created energy.  Ok so at the end of the week you have used the 10 dollars, and go into the bank and hand over 11 dollars just as promised, sounds ok right?  On a closer look this presents many problems.  As soon as those 10 dollars are created, the value, or purchasing power of each existing dollar is reduced. The 1 dollar of interest was never created, so must be taken from somewhere else. This where the enslavement comes in. where that effort it takes you to generate that dollar  is taken from you. In basic theory the interest is the banks "profit", in reality it's much different.  As the dollars did not exist until you asked for them, and you "paid" the loan of those phantom dollars with dollars obtained from another source, be it your work, or a loan from another source, or whatever, the whole 11 dollars is pure "profit" with zero risk, all at the stroke of a few keys.  This also creates a system where all currency is not created equally.  Currency created at lower interest rates becomes much more powerful, and desirable, as it can be used to for speculative purposes with a higher rate of return.  That might seem complex, but really it's fairly simple, if a dollar is created with .10 cents of interest attached to it, or a simple flat 10% interest rate, that dollar starts out with a value of 90 cents. Where a dollar created with .20 cents of interest attached with start out with a true value of .80 cents. Not to tough to see, how these hidden differences in the values of the same currency can  be exploited by those with access and understanding.  Another distortion occurs when the interest rates are manipulated, causing misallocation of currency, along with a changes in the currency velocity. When interest rates are held artificially low, currency pools as the perceived risks of "lending" it outweigh the potential returns, as well as higher returns are easier to find in speculation of growing pools of currency that new real world productive endeavors.  When interest rates are artificially high than the speculative investment moves into making loans. Causing the currency velocity to soar, but increased risk in the nature of the loans made. Many other issues exist in interest being attached to currency creation, just look into the history of usury.
      Lastly, before we take a look at the idea of the "Current Sea"  lets look at at how speculation warps, and distorts our whole economic system.  First off there is a difference between speculative, and productive investment.   Productive investment has real world attachment, and purpose, for example a community coming together to be sure the farmers have enough seed to provide for food needs, or even providing the currency for research and development of new technology, or advancement of medical understanding.  Productive investment carries a risk to the currency invested, but the pay off is not in a return of currency, but produced item, or resource.  The flip to this, speculative investing is purely done with the intent to generate more currency for the investor.
 Productive investment adds to the well being of the whole, multiplying the beneficial effects of new development by pooling the resources of a group, and directing the flow of the "Current Sea".  On the other hand speculative investing is purely done for the purpose of generating more currency for the speculator.  Now it still sometimes provides currency used for productive means, and many productive investments are speculative. The real problems arise when the investing drifts into the purely speculative.  In commodities when there is no actual transfer of possession, and the speculation is purely on paper, it creates distortions in value of products people rely on for daily survival such as food, and water.  When currency itself is allowed to become a speculative commodity, the potential distortion to the purchasing power of the individual units of currency can be catastrophic.  Basically each dollar used to bet on the future value of the dollar distorts the current, and future purchasing power the everyday person uses to sustain their daily lives.  Pure speculative investment is a tax, plain and simple it creates no value, instead stealing value from whatever it infects, kind of a parasite, on the productivity of the whole. So how can these be avoid, while still allowing for the benefits or fiat currency? Just change how currency is viewed and hopefully it becomes evident.

Smooth Sailing

       I've repeatedly used the term "Current Sea" throughout this meandering, but what is meant by it? Our economic system taken in it's entirety is the "Current Sea", with the people, and corporations being the entities, and the currency being the water all depend on and exist in.  Like any body of water it has currents, eddy's, shallows, and hidden depths.  It can be likened to a living sea with all different types of entities all connected and sustained by the sea.  So pretty easy analogy, currency is the water, the life blood, or energy flowing through our "Current Sea" driving the living system that sustains us all. With this depiction in mind, apply some of the distorting ideas, suddenly some of the entities find themselves as fish out of water.  The distorting effects of our current economic systems could be likened to whirlpools, drawing in more and more currency, sucking it away from entities on the edges of the "Current Sea".  In a healthy "Current Sea" the currency flows bringing along with it all each entity needs to thrive.  This relates to the ideas of money, and currency in profound ways, true money becomes a store for currency, but not currency itself.  Currency stays in it's proper place as the life blood of productive endeavor, while money acts as a store house for the future use of

productivity.  Under the rules of the game as we now play, a central bank of issue, combined with a cartel of private banks run the "Current Sea" for the benefit of themselves.  In an ideal system the currency would be managed from the perspective of keeping the "Current Sea" healthy.  In other words keeping the currency as a tool of the people. In this type of system, the entities living in the "Current Sea" naturally direct the flow of the currency, ebbs and flows of industry come back to demand based. The rise and fall of the so called business cycle ceases, to shamelessly steal from those much more perceptive than I, the spice flows.
      I have no degrees in economics, and might be inclined to debate if any such thing is reasonable in relation to what is an admitted pseudoscience.  Our systems have been increasingly complexified in order to obfuscate it's true predatory nature.  If I need more qualification aside from having been a participant for my entire life and being capable of observation, it has yet to been brought to my attention.  I could go on and on, but I think that will have to wait for future posts.


Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

What The F@#$ People, Are You Kidding Me!!

            As you might have gathered, today is just pure exasperation.  In the US we have been warned of growing threat to our liberty for decades. It's even quite simple to follow the warnings back to before the founding of this nation.  While I might be a charter member of the tin foil hat wearing club by many peoples standards.  I am not talking about any grand over arching conspiracy, though there are many to go around.  Our current scandal over torture is another slide toward the ideals of collective self interest.  In almost all of the warnings our leaders have given us, they seem to have this common thread,  The instances of, as well as the broad scope lead most to see disparate unrelated causation. Is this really the case or are we looking at a more fundamental challenge to individual expression?  To answer this we might need to take a step back at the principals the US government were founded on.
          The most basic idea drilled into school children has been the separation of powers, or checks and balances.  Three branches, with the press being the public check on the system as a whole.  No one branch being afforded a dominate position. Extend this idea to a nation, or the planet, and suddenly a new picture emerges.  Oppression, exploitation, and genocide, repeated through history. One groups collective self interest being used to justify all manor of horrors, perpetrated on those perceived as other.  Even taken to the scale of humanity as a whole, the dangers of unrestrained collective self interest are apparent.  This is something that was well understood by the founders of the US, corporate charters were for short duration, and to be renewed the public benefit had to be shown.  The alteration of these ideals was not done in your interest, or mine.  Now we have gotten to where corporate entities have become almost super beings.  Wielding influence over aspects of everyday life most can scarcely imagine.  Enacting policies even to the detriment of those employed by the corporate entity.
         A bunch of gobbledygook to get to, the purpose of any governing body is not to govern it's people, It's to protect them from being governed by anyone, or thing aside from their own conscience. To ensure the liberties we all see as our birthright are not infringed.

Is that the government we have?


Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Money is a Tool

            I'm going to talk about currency again today.  I know, I know it seems to be one of my favorite things to write about. While it might seem like that, I assure I'd rather spend my time pondering the so called deep questions of existence.  The thing that keeps me coming back to the topic of currency, and money is simple, it's at the heart of most if not all of the short comings of humanity. I'm not going to cover the history of the hijacking of the world, and I feel full confidence in saying the world. As of the the writing of this there are 3 countries without a privately owned/controlled central bank.  When you begin to look a bit behind the scenes you find a very small number of people who flat out own the worlds currency.  I intentionally did not use the word money, as we do not use money, what we use as a means of exchange does not fit the definition of money, so in using the term money you help reinforce the open lie.  Let me again state I am not anti currency, I'm not even anti fiat currency.  I actually am in favor of a currencies value being tied to the nations gdp, and the amount of currency in circulation.  Where a nation treated the currency as a utility, an accounting tool to both allow for as well as track the exchange of goods and services.  What we have is a magic trick designed to transfer all real wealth into the hands of a few.  Any nation that allows for a privately owned/controlled central bank to issue it's currency at interest will fail, this is just a mathematical certainty.
          So why do I feel this is such an important issue for the world?
It's simple really, I won't even have pets, as I do not like the thought of being a pet. With privately owned/controlled currency creation we are little better then economic chattel.  By even using the currency you help perpetuate the system. Many will balk and chafe at these  words insisting we need the system, I agree we need a system to allow for exchange to easily take place. I do not agree we need to allow a small global cartel to profit of the labor of every man, woman, and child.  Do not be fooled, if you use the currency of your nation, or union you are profiting people you've never even heard of.  Do your research learn how this system works, come to grips with the responsibility inherent in the idea of freedom.  Come to grips with the hard truths, once enough of the people point out the emperor has no clothes, we can do something about it.
           Fix the money, and many other things will fix themselves.


Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

The Neutral Money Myth, or Context the Hidden Polarity

           There is a prevailing view among many that money is only energy, and it's use is the determining factor as to the charge it carries.  This obviously carries some truth, what is left out is that every dollar, pound, euro, yuan, rupee, or ruble has a story, they carry their own context. So while the idea of money, or currency is just a means of exchange. A way to remove many of the limitations on barter, I mean who wants to carry around a truck load of chickens, just to get some rice, or pay rent.  If we had base neutral money/currency this post would be over right here.  The trouble with holding this as your prevailing view is this.  It ignores the larger context, the currencies we all use on a regular basis do not exist in a vacuum. This means the currency you receive does not reach you in an energy neutral state. It carries with it the context of all it has been used for before, as well as the context of it's creation.  While the polarity of it's previous use can be easily cleared, this is not the case when it comes to it's creation.
           Before I continue, let me express that I understand that for most people refraining from the use of their local currency would foster hardship.  That being said understanding what accepting it's use means to me is an important step in moving toward a fair, free exchange system.  So what type of system for currency creation to we have in place now?  The majority of the worlds currency is created by private banking institutions at interest, with little to no backing.  This means by using the currency you're inadvertently giving tacit endorsement of what in criminal terms would be a racketeering. Yes it's a sad but true fact, our financial system is little different than a government back organized crime syndicate.  By participating we are giving our go ahead to the theft of not just our own future labors, but also those of our children, and their children.  This government backed monopoly is nothing short of a built in mechanism to ensure profit of the system off any endeavor anyone may undertake.  Taking this idea a step farther and it turns into a method of power retention. This is a bit easier to understand when you realize, your money is not yours, never was yours, and never will be yours. It is always the property of the system that created it, you are a user of it, and pay usury for the privilege of doing so.
          So when you next hear that money is neither good nor bad it is only energy, point out this while true in the abstract, lacks the context of the world we inhabit, and the currency we have is no more than a tool of enslavement, designed with purpose, and intent.

As always, think for yourself.

Jack
aka PanseyBard

The Not so Uncertain Future of BitCoin

       I like many others are very excited by BitCoin as well as other crypto-currencies.  This is still true as I write this, I still see decentralization as the future of almost all things. 3d printing has the ability to decentralize production. While new developments in energy production as several fronts will potentially make anyone who desires it energy independent.  Even with this optimism BitCoin as I see it lacks future potential as a currency is limited.  It's math nature makes it unsuited to being used as such with our current model of capitalism.  There are some concepts of the nature of currency. Currency is a tool for accounting, its a method to make easy the tracking, and transfer of goods and services. Currency not to be confused with items of inherent value are only useful in the realm of issuance.  So what makes BitCoin unsuited to this task? Mathematically planned maximum number of coins would be all that is needed to see it's future is pretty easy to guess. From the much ballyhooed worlds most powerful decentralized network, to the trading of coins.
      Miners will cease operation all together when the coins are all mined.  With their exit most of the processing power of the network will go with it.  The miners those that have kept up with increase in difficulty will turn their machines to other problems, most of these are what are called asic, or application specific integrated circuit making them unsuitable to any other task.  So there will be a fork or division of the algorithm used as proof of work for mining BitCoins.  Most of the power backing the network gone it's only those trading the coins, and only when they have their machines on with their wallets open to be supporting the network. When trading coins between individuals it's the same as cash no fees, this isn't true when your using it to pay for actual items. The payment processing will take a percentage away every transaction, till the coins are pooled in the wallets of very few. The value of the ideas presented in BitCoin will be realized in the coming of the DAC a digital autonomous corporation.  This is a legal entity that once birthed into the digital world it takes on a life of it's own out of the hands of it's creators just as the coins currently do.  The difference will be these entities will provide a service and live and die on their own merits paying dividends to those active. Some I've seen ideas for are a streaming service combining torrent ideas with bitcoin ideas allowing the videos to be hosted across the network and rewarding those serving data.  We will shortly see the release of many new DAC's reshaping the digital world.
       Bottom line is the planned end of new coins will mean the end of use as currency. It still may hold value, as any "rare" item holds value. A currency though needs wide acceptance, and the amount in circulation has to meet the needs of trade. A fiat currency which by default BitCoin is, needs strict controls on issuance, and maintenance to keep the system the currency supports in motion. That is not to say I'm in favor continuing the current system prevalent in the world with private corporations issuing currencies for nations.  This leads to a whole other set of problems myself, and others have covered many times.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Ramble On

         Today lets talk eternal, what that actually means.  First off I defer to great thinkers through out time both religious and secular.  So many have reported some sort of continuation beyond what we think of as physical death.  If we are talking a purely energetic transfer, where what we think of as us ceases when our body stops functioning we can end the thoughts right now.  If on the other hand there is a bit more of us that continues on this journey of existence other questions spring forth.  How about even the Idea that energy can not be created or destroyed it can only be transformed.  Taken to an extreme that would mean all things that exist now, have in some form or another always existed, and will always exist.  That there can be no beginning or ending, there would be only transition, one state or phase endlessly shifting to another.  There are so many questions of the why's and how's.
       I want to think a bit about what it means from an individualized portion of self. Not a being that identifies with a single name, but one that has been so many names and is in all likely hood experiencing all these names now.  To a being like this what a gift it must be to have firsts, or a conception of an end.  To forget if only in delusion the infinite self.  What a gift the finite, the present would be to an entity with this conception of self.  Hold in mind this concept, of a self that has ultimately been every name. Now lets twist things around a bit.  From this side we have taken natural time and using computers increased the effective time people live.
I could go into clock cycles, and try to get into ideas of changing the fundamental flow of time. How the pure access to information, and the speed of dissemination changes who we are and how we interact with our world.  Many have talked about how disconnected we have become from each other on a personal level. Even as our world has become infinitely smaller, as people all over the globe instantly communicate real time. How quickly our understanding changes and grows, how difficult it becomes to stay current.  How easy it becomes to be lost in a technological time warp.  If we are to believe that Moore's law will hold true for even the next 20 years the changes from this moment to that moment will be astounding.
    Now for a bit of the inane at least from my perspective.  I have been playing with, and learning about the crypto-currencies. Some Ideas on Bitcoin, what makes this valuable it has no backing.  There is the idea that it currently has the largest distributed network ever created.  This is amazing, and sad. Amazing that it's been created at all. Sad that it's being used to make essentially video game money.  Virtual gold coins to be traded in a virtual world. Who's use creates the value, Just as the value of the U.S. Dollar is in the decline due to losing it's status as the worlds trade currency.  You can argue that last statement, though it would be one of extent.  While yes technically the Dollar remains the worlds reserve currency it is steadily losing it's use as a trade currency.  Bitcoin's use and acceptance as a cross boarder currency in an increasingly globalized world will only hasten the decline.  This doesn't make Bitcoin the answer, as it seems even farther removed from the resources then the traditional fiat currencies we are already using.  If the Dollar is rotten, anything that has it's value tied directly to the dollar has to be rotten as well.


Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Setting up a Cloud Miner for Protoshares

          Well I've been playing around with mining crypto currencies for a few days now, did some research going in, and as I wrote in yesterdays post stumbled upon Protoshares, developed by http://invictus-innovations.com/ their approach is rather ingenious from my perspective.  After setting up a cpl dual core laptops to mine, I know the warnings.  I was actually being able to see shares being credited to my account with http://ptsweb.beeeeer.org/  the pool I chose.  It suddenly clicked and boy did I feel stupid when it did, people are not using their own machines to mine this. So I started to look at the virtual machines, cloud based computing for those of not up on the jargon.  The idea is you rent processor power, memory, the whole nine from a one of the many cloud hosting companies.  Once you set up your machine through their interface, and log into it, you can run the mining software remotely.  As long as you are making more then the cost of hosting it's profitable.  For testing, and learning I am using http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/ there are lower cost solutions, but Microsoft offers a $200 credit for a trial, and pay as you go programs so it's a safe test bed for a newbie like myself.
           Setting up the server was a breeze as long as you choose an image from the library and go through the guided set up.  I chose the newest linux, 4 cores, 7gigs.  once it's deployed and running it's time to log in.
Logging in is simple, you need a terminal client, I downloaded  http://www.putty.org/.  From the management page copy the ssh details, and paste them into the putty.  If all is well your on a terminal for your VM. Log in, this where I had to dig the memory banks a bit.  It has been a long time since I was in front of a terminal needing to know command line functions. Even though I've been doing freelance low level tech work for years, very few people knowledgeable enough to use Linux need my help. Thanks to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345386.0 to the folks on this forum for having the pieces there even if they were a bit scattered.  I pieced together the commands to get the miner up and running.
          Here is the list of commands I used,

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y git make g++ build-essential libminiupnpc-dev

sudo apt-get install -y libboost-all-dev libdb++-dev libgmp-dev libssl-dev dos2unix

sudo apt-get install build-essential libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev zlib1g-dev yasm

git clone https://github.com/thbaumbach/ptsminer

cd ~/ptsminer/src

make -f makefile.unix

./ptsminer <your PTS number> <number of cores>


other then setting up the pts wallet to make sure you have a place for them to go that was it.

if this was of use to you consider a small gift

PTS# Pd7xb3Q4idGiGa1iMawVuAYx42WZch1KdG

or for BTC

Note it seems this works for intel based. so it will work on the the intel based clouds. I got one up on amd through another pool, will post the steps for that soon.



Thanks much
Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Did You Miss the Boat on Bitcoin?.....Don't Sleep on Keyhotee!!

         A couple of years ago I learned about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin mining.  I had no actual understanding of what the project was about, or how it actually worked.  I just found out enough to if I had been more cognizant of future trends I could have jumped on the band wagon.  Really I wasn't all that interested, at the time I was more interested in the idea that the vibration of the planet is increasing. So I figured if that was true there would be a way to work out what the new vibration would settle into.  I'm not going to dull your senses with a blow by blow, If you want to know more about that just ask.
        Today lets take a look at what could be the biggest thing to hit the web since well the web.  Almost all of you have some concern or another about internet privacy, identity theft, NSA spying, the works basicly.
Now what if I told you a start up has figured out how to make the traditional cyber threats individuals face obsolete, as well as how to determine fair market for just about anything you can imagine?  Sounds pretty damn amazing huh?  Well take a look at this http://invictus-innovations.com/, for all those concerned with privacy you might be interested in watching this video. Even as a low level computer tech it really helped bring into the view the big picture of what These folks have going on. Introduction to Keyhotee, for some reason blogger couldn't find that video.
        I am not a pro anything, I play. Because of that I have a lack of desire for riches in the traditional fashion.  So for me this isn't about a money making idea, it's the principles behind it that made me look closer, and the desire to get involved.  It's the concept of distributed versus centralized power in all forms.
That being said, I'm not devoid of material needs. So as I write this I have laptops mining pts hoping to make at least the minimum 10 needed to get in as a founder before the x-mas deadline.  That is a wonderful piece of marketing, the ties to the dates already ingrained, the time crunch. and making it the present you get to give all those who saw the new year coming before it was.  Wonderful.

happen to have a pts to spare lol
Pd7xb3Q4idGiGa1iMawVuAYx42WZch1KdG

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Last Call Has Sounded

I've been staying away from economics, so many people think it's so dull, and frankly I have never cared all that much for money as an abstraction.  My heart does have large tracts of space for all sorts of creatures who still believe in the dollar, or piles of gold. What ever make you feel secure I suppose.  The U.S. has been belly up to the bar of cheap cash for so long now, that people don't even know what sound fiscal policy is.  This is likely to change, and in the short term as opposed to the long haul.  Take a look at this article, and then lets take another look at the financial house of cards has been built.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-20/pboc-says-no-longer-in-china-s-favor-to-boost-record-reserves.html  not enough, then maybe this one will get ya over the hump
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/china-announces-that-it-is-going-to-stop-stockpiling-u-s-dollars

I was so not paying attention to it anymore, and it was so under the boards that I almost missed it.  Think of this now, we are printing 85 billion a month, someone needs to buy that debt, or we are going to swallow it.

Bottom line, we stop printing and our interest rates must rise, we've been trading long term debt for short term debt. Meaning we have to cycle through it ever faster. If that new debt has no place to go, and the interest rates are forced to rise then we as a nation will not be able to fund our obligations due to the interest payments rising out of control.

Again, for me, this is not a bad thing, it's just a thing. If your counting on dollars for your security, then buckle up it's gonna get bumpy.

Jack

Power, Best Shared?

          I was watching a show on fusion reactors it started a chain of thought crossing through generation of electric power, through power in it's many flavors. What I was first struck by aside from a feeling of utter stupidity. I mean the complexity of just the instruments folks are designing to monitor these reactions is astounding.  The process they are duplicating, and that we even can is a testament to how far we've come in such a short time.  I mean ITER will be a stunning display of the consolidation of power.  By this time I had moved toward ideas that perhaps our ideas on a consolidated power generation need at think.  Maybe a distributed system would be nice approach. Generation of power would start on a local level, wind, water, solar. Advances like this should see independent power generation on the rise.  A grid where everyone supported everyone else, but also maintained local generation of power would also add a layer of security in not offering a few large targets to take down the entire grid.
        Well by now I was off, how is energy any different then any other kind of power?  As it turns out, it's not. Power is Power, doesn't matter the form, and it can take almost all of the, it's still power. As power it obeys all the same patterns no matter the form you find it in.  This got me off the idea of distributed versus consolidated power systems.  In the world today it's all about consolidation, the idea of people with power will do everything they can to keep it.  Utter silliness almost everyone gets the idea that the best way to keep something is to make sure everyone has it.
        In our world, power in all it's forms has be pooled, pooled power stagnates, and draws opposition.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

America, Portrait of a Failed Nation

         As an American I feel it's not just my right, but my responsibility to point out just how massive, and all encompassing our failure is.   Many still cry out that we are the best nation in the world, all while the statistics, and experience is otherwise.  Some my rail against what they see as me being anti-america. They would be correct, I am against the America I see out my window, on my TV screen, and in cyber space. I have trouble understanding how your not as disappointed as I am.  If there is a way for a nation to fail that America has not already failed in I'd be shocked.
        If we had problems in just one area you might be able to say it was the exception, but on the whole America is solid.  Our economy is touted as being the #1 in the world based on gdp. All well and good if we lived in fantasy land, but where I live when your top export to one of your biggest trade partners is trash. Your in trouble. You did read that right, America's biggest export to China is returning the packaging for all the goodies they make us.  We act like it's Christmas everyday, and as long as we send the wrapping and boxes back Santa will refill them.
      The ACA or Obamacare as it's widely know is a 10k+ page monstrosity.  Seemingly designed to force people that don't use a system to pay for those that do.  This debacle at health care reform is just another example of political theater designed to confuse, and bewilder.  Mean while back in reality the rest of the world divests itself of the dollar.
       So no economy, no health care, how about education?  Well no again we are failing. According to the latest data America isn't even in the top 10.  We don't even make the playoffs.  No wonder the hi-tech jobs are leaving, we increasingly are unable to fill them.  You can find a more detailed account of just how badly we are failing in this regard here.
       There was for years the expectation in America that children would be better off then their parents.  This is no longer the case, and unless fundamental changes are made we won't even recognize the country we wake up in. I have come to the painful realization that the country I was taught about was only a story.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Pirates and the New World Order

      Americans seem to have a love affair with idea of a pirate.  We romanticize them like we do the cowboys, creating a picture of a world that never existed.  They have come to represent a sense of freedom we seem to have lost in our constricted civilized world.   This got me thinking what place does the pirate have in our modern world.  When I started to look around I noticed many of our most famed or infamous have much in common with the beloved pirate.

Pirate defined

      What we get is a picture of a person that holds no loyalty to any nation. A pirate is beyond such considerations, not out of a sense of duty to something bigger then a nation. The pirate is out for the pirate. Many of our top level corporate officers, bankers, and the like are modern pirates.  They profit from off shore, paying no heed to national loyalties.

         So when I was watching the popular modern pirate epics Pirates of the Caribbean. I started noticing  there seemed to be an odd theme to the first movie.
I then watched the 3rd, looking to see if this one also had an odd overall teaching.
Not surprisingly it was easily found.  By the time I watched the middle film I was sure it would be easy to spot. Surprisingly it completely escaped me, this may have been due to being distracted.  Taken in whole these are basic guidelines for how to live a pirates life.

Curse of the Black Pearl: "what a man can do, and what a man can't do"  that is a very profound lesson for a would be pirate.  Laws do not apply to a pirate, so there is only what you are able and willing to do, and what you are unable, or unwilling to do.

 Dead Man's Chest: there is no quote from this movie that I found that aptly spells out the lesson. Instead the lesson is shown by every character in their actions. That message being every man for himself, or self interest governs all.
This is clearly shown as every character lies, cheats, and steals for their own perceived well being.

 At Worlds End: "take what you can, give nothing back" This is pretty self explanatory, and quite evident.

So there it is, if you want to know how to become pirate, live by those guidelines.

Oh and for a bit of fun, look at how our international corporations have been acting.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard